1,542.3 tonnes — a steep drop in the largest single use of the metal.
as the price carried everything upward. The paradox defines an unusual
year for the industry.¹
report make the pattern clear. Global jewellery demand came in at
category rose 18 percent to US$172 billion — a divergence driven
entirely by the roughly 45 percent jump in the average gold price to
year-on-year, consistent with the WGC figures.²
cautious: "Jewellery to remain weak in a persistent high price
environment."¹ For a category that still represents about 40 percent of
global gold end-use according to USGS' 2025 tallies, a 20-percent volume
contraction is significant.² It also matters for the balance of the
market: weaker jewellery buying offset part of the investment boom, and
its 2026 trajectory will shape how tight supply feels.
commodity-proxy market is not. Most jewellery buyers work to a budget.
falls even as cash outlays hold steady or rise.
footfall in most markets but lighter average piece weights, more
frequent use of lower-karat alloys (14k and 18k displacing 22k in some
markets), and growing acceptance of smaller designs. The shift was
particularly visible in India, where 22k jewellery has historically
dominated but where 18k gained share during the price acceleration of
the second half of the year.
balance. The year 2025 ended with jewellery absorbing dramatically less
ounce-volume than it would have at a lower price — freeing metal for the
investment and official-sector channels that drove the bull market in
the first place.
jewellery demand in a normal year, and their combined behaviour shapes
the headline number. Both markets pulled back in volume terms during
with softer consumer-spending data and a slower wedding season
contributing to the drop. Indian buyers, culturally bound to festival
and wedding cycles, cushioned part of the decline but shifted decisively
toward lighter designs.
was striking for a different reason: more than half of the WGC's US$154
billion global bar-and-coin total came from the two countries.¹ That is
the same population of buyers who softened jewellery spending. In other
words, the regional capital did not leave gold — it simply shifted from
ornamental to investment form.
weakness. If gold-buying households in India and China collectively
allocated more physical gold to bar-and-coin channels than they did to
ornamental jewellery, the apparent demand softness in one line is really
a reclassification within the same broader flow. The total physical
metal absorbed by these markets remained at or near historic highs, even
as the jewellery share of that total fell.
changes that will persist into 2026. Several major chains in India
accelerated digital sales, recognising that smaller pieces move well
through e-commerce. Chinese retailers trimmed physical footprint in
lower-tier cities and invested in private-label gold bars to capture the
investment demand that had displaced traditional jewellery spend.
inventory, some LBMA-accredited refineries repositioned capacity toward
bar-and-coin production and central-bank-eligible 400-ounce good
delivery bars. The industrial plumbing adjusts faster than the cultural
narrative, and by the end of 2025 the physical-gold ecosystem looked
more investment-tilted than any year since 2013.
The reconfiguration of refining capacity matters for the supply side.
a shift that took engineering work but paid off almost immediately in
product mix and margin. The investment-demand cycle is rewarding
refineries that are flexible across product formats.
an unusual price, or a structural shift away from gold jewellery.
Analysts are divided.
average price jump in 2025 was an outlier event, and historically such
moves are followed by stabilisation. If prices consolidate in the
meaningfully as buyers adjust to the new normal.
markets are shifting preferences toward platinum, silver and lab-grown
diamonds for aesthetic jewellery, reserving gold for investment or
cultural occasions. If that split persists, global gold jewellery de